Jim Garrison - America as Empire

America was founded on the principles of equality, liberty, and justice—revered as a place of unlimited potential for those possessing little more than the will to succeed. In Garrison's view, America has grown far beyond these characteristics, beyond what the Founding Fathers—and most Americans—ever imagined. America has now become, Garrison says, “an unrivaled empire among the nations. . . . It used to represent freedom. Now it represents power.”

This talk by Mr. Garrison for EnlightenNext presents the author and historian at his most provocative and refined. His discourse is flawlessly composed and delivered, and is followed here by an engaging question-and-answer session.

Central to Garrison's critique is the question of whether Americans are willing to acknowledge and accept the responsibility that its unrivaled power confers. Will it wield its overarching might merely to insure its own continuing sovereignty? Or will America reach for a higher goal and become what Garrison calls a “transitional” power, essentially a final empire, using its authority to help create a radically new, democratically governed global system?

“This is the challenge before America: to manifest a destiny of both light and power at the level of global affairs. It is ultimately a challenge about how high it will cast its sights, about what kind of vision it will manifest as it leads in an integrating world fraught with crises.”

BIO

Jim Garrison cofounded the State of the World Forum in 1995 with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Forum is a San Francisco-based non-profit institution created to establish a global network of leaders dedicated to those principles, values, and actions necessary to guide humanity toward a more sustainable global civilization. With President Gorbachev as its Convening Chairman and Jim Garrison as its President, the Forum has brought together leaders from around the world to its annual and regional convenings to deliberate upon and take action concerning issues of global concern. Jim's most recent focus, and that of the Forum, has been the Integral Governance Initiative, dedicated to establishing global issue networks to solve global problems.

Garrison became active in foreign policy issues, particularly with Soviet-American relations, in the mid-1970s. From 1986 to 1990, he served as Executive Director of the Esalen Institute Soviet American Exchange Program, which engaged in nongovernmental diplomacy with Soviet counterparts in a variety of sectors. In 1991, he founded the International Foreign Policy Association in collaboration with Georgian President Edward Shevardnadze and former Secretary of State George Schultz, focusing on providing humanitarian relief for children in the former Soviet republics. He has also written six books on various aspects of philosophical theology and history, including Civilization and the Transformation of Power (2000) and the most recent America as Empire (2004).

Garrison was born in Szechuan Province, China, in 1951 to Baptist missionaries. He lived with his family in Taiwan from 1953 to 1965, after which they settled permanently in San Jose, California. He holds an M.T.S. in Christology and History of Religion from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from Cambridge University.